Mr. Herman Merivale sends to Thursday's Times rather curious evidence
of the very subjective way in which
biographers often describe facts. Mr. Forster, and a more recent student of Dickens,—Mr. A. W. Ward, who wrote the study of Dickens in Mr. John Morley's series,— have both described the last few weeks of Dickens's life as rapidly darkening towards the end. Mr. Merivale, who acted in some private theatricals of which Dickens was the soul, exactly seven days before Dickens's death, declares that there is hardly any truth in this statement; that in the many re- hearsals and all the preparations for the play, Dickens was full of animation and life, and went through the whole "with in- fectious enjoyment." And Dickens's own letters on the subject fully confirm Mr. Merivale's statement. The truth is, that biographers, as they approach the end, naturally pass under the influence of the shadow of Death, and forget that it by no means follows that the subject of their delineation had any similar premonition. Dickens, we believe, died of apoplexy, and it is not uncommon for those who die of apoplexy to have even some accession of good spirits towards the close.
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